Joe was allowed to draft Darko instead of Wade or Anthony.The Pistons organization allowed Dumars to gamble with its future without any input from who I consider the best coach in basketball in the last 20 plus years and that is Larry Brown. He took us to a Championship ,the following year to the seventh game of the championship series and was then fired. From all accounts he did not want Darko, he wanted Anthony. That was attributed to Anthony and Brown attending the same university-Syracuse. Without Larry Brown the Pistons don't win a championship and because Joe D. thought he didn't need help from the only coach to win titles in both college and the pro's or anybody in the organization he was allowed to make a decision that would change the course of the team from being a perennial playoff team to a laughingstock. Joe couldn't have won three championships without riding the coattails of Isiah Thomas and Larry Brown. By himself he has single handedly set the organization back to square one. Stay put with basketball decisions until the Pistons find another GM.

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or.... you can say that Darko drafted by the right team could have been motivated to play to his skills (which i still think he has... if you forget his 10 cent brain) and anthony would have rotted and gotten a bad head sitting on the bench, don't forgot how brown treated the boy in the olympics....

Hindsight is sooooo easy to make the right decisions, everybody said Darko was the 2nd pick in the draft and might have been thought of as a number one pick if it hadn't been for a little known King coming out for the draft that year.

And for all the fans of Larry Brown, how many championships has he won without Joe Dumars?

Mike (Sylvania, Ohio): Nice blog about the Spurs’ season when they were lucky enough to “win” Duncan. I was thinking the same thing the other day. It seems like every team now considered elite was in the lottery at some point. Orlando had the No. 1 pick and got Dwight Howard. The Lakers were lucky enough to get Kobe, the Celtics had enough young assets from being in the lottery to trade for Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett, the Hawks were in the lottery for about two decades and the Cavs had the No. 1 pick and got LeBron. I think it’s safe to say that drafting in the latter part of the first round (or injuries) eventually catches up to you and it’s almost mandatory a team gets its franchise player from being in the lottery at least for a year.
Langlois: Great points, Mike. The NBA, to a far greater extent than the other major sports, is heavily dependent on getting a premium draft pick every once in a while and having the good fortune to have that pick in a year where there are truly franchise-altering talents available. You can win consistently in the NFL, MLB and NHL without ever picking in the top 10, but as you’ve noted, it’s very difficult to do in the NBA where one person has a far greater proportional impact on the game than in other sports. (Quarterback would be the exception, but a Pro Bowl quarterback is almost as likely to come from a round other than the first – Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Brett Favre, Kurt Warner and Matt Schaub are examples off the top of my head.) It’s also important to note that while almost every team in the NBA with a chance to win a title at one point had a high lottery pick, the inverse isn’t necessarily true. Having a high lottery pick gives you a chance, but some drafts don’t produce any players capable of that level of greatness and many players picked in the top five turn out to be average or worse. In the year Orlando took Howard, Emeka Okafor – a decent player, but not an All-Star by any means – was the clear-cut No. 2 pick. The Lakers have defied the odds with shrewd trades – and the allure of Los Angeles doesn’t hurt. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar demanded to be traded from Milwaukee to either New York or Los Angeles, which propped open the window of opportunity there for many years. Shaquille O’Neal chose to leave Orlando for Los Angeles. But getting high draft picks from the Jazz and Cavs and converting them into Magic Johnson and James Worthy was shrewd, as was trading Vlade Divac to the Hornets for a high school guard, Kobe Bryant, drafting a high school center 10th, Andrew Bynum, and moving quickly to get Pau Gasol from Memphis before the story leaked and Memphis had the chance to get cold feet – as it likely would have when the reaction to the deal became public knowledge.

No doubt. Still hearing Paul's name floating around. I don't know if its just a big tease but if they don't want to pay him then I am sure he would fit in pretty nicely over here.

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I don't see NO letting him go unless it's a spectacular deal. Not only is he their entire franchise; He's got favorite-son status in the New Orleans community. I can only imagine the fan backlash for that franchise if they were to ship him outta town.

Plus Paul's BYC status means that they would likely hang on to him until after July 1st.

The only thing that I could think of would be either a three team deal or a scenario where Joe picks for NO in the lottery this year and sends "that guy" + Jeb & Tay to the Hornets for CP3.

I don't see NO letting him go unless it's a spectacular deal. Not only is he their entire franchise; He's got favorite-son status in the New Orleans community. I can only imagine the fan backlash for that franchise if they were to ship him outta town.

Plus Paul's BYC status means that they would likely hang on to him until after July 1st.

The only thing that I could think of would be either a three team deal or a scenario where Joe picks for NO in the lottery this year and sends "that guy" + Jeb & Tay to the Hornets for CP3.

The forum is a place to share ideas and thoughts on the team. It seems you don't like the trade threads, any thread that talks about any players on the team and their development or lack there of, any article written by Lang. or any other writer for that matter.

The forum is a place to share ideas and thoughts on the team. It seems you don't like the trade threads, any thread that talks about any players on the team and their development or lack there of, any article written by Lang. or any other writer for that matter.

What do you expect to see when you log on here???

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sigh.

those "how to get cp3 " are not trade ideas, they are fantasy.CP3 is the cornerstone of the franchise, already proven allstar and future hall of famer.